English

Chessboard and level sets of continuous functions

General Topology 2025-05-06 v5 Combinatorics

Abstract

We provide the following result and its discrete equivalent: Let f ⁣:InRn1f \colon I^n \to \mathbb{R}^{n-1} be a continuous function. Then, there exist a point pRn1p \in \mathbb{R}^{n-1} and a compact subset Sf1[{p}]S \subset f^{-1}\left[\left\{p\right\}\right] which connects some opposite faces of the nn-dimensional unit cube InI^n. We give an example that shows it cannot be generalized to path-connected sets. Additionally, we show that the nn-dimensional Steinhaus Chessboard Theorem and the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem are simple consequences of this result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.13774,
  title  = {Chessboard and level sets of continuous functions},
  author = {Michał Dybowski and Przemysław Górka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.13774},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:12:34.706Z